silence in stride
by sarsaparillia
Summary: Her voice was dreamy, and Draco quite honestly wondered whether anyone ever took her seriously. — Draco/Luna.


Happy Christmas, new fandom!  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. Not even in my wildest dreams.  
**Dedication**: To Ren. Happy Christmas! Also to Sonya, but only because this is the last vestige of pride I have.  
**About the pairing**: shut up, it's a Christmas present. And it's so… random and funny. =]

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Draco Malfoy hated weddings. Despised them, really. There was nothing redeeming about them – nothing at all. The whole _idea_ of a 'wedding'; it just made him cringe in something like disgust.

So how he had ended up at Weaselbee's wedding was rather a mystery to him (this, of course, was a lie. Pansy had told him -in a calm, soft, and _terrifying_ voice- that if he should even _think_ about not showing up at her wedding, there would have been hell to pay, and possibly the loss of any ability to produce children. Draco had complied with little prodding after _that_, as Pansy when angry was a horrible thing to behold).

The wedding itself (the actual church part – gave Draco the willies. All that… _commitment_) had been short. Pansy had glowed while her father had walked her down the aisle, Weaselbee had looked more gobsmacked than usual, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Nine minutes into the reception, Draco -being Draco- had found his way to the open bar.

_Merlin_, did he hate weddings.

After he'd downed his eighth shot of firewhiskey in the span of four minutes, Draco was pleasantly buzzed, and he looked up to find Luna Lovegood staring right back at him, a rather serene look on her face.

She looked mostly – almost normal, Draco thought, a little blearily. The eccentric girl was wearing pale-yellow-starshine robes, embroidered with flickering silver butterflies that danced their way across the fabric; there was a large silver butterfly stationed in her long dirty blonde hair, as well.

Then he caught a flash of her radish earrings, and decided then and there that the girl could _never_ pull off 'normal'. She was simply too weird.

"You know…," she remarked as she stared at him. Her voice was dreamy, and Draco quite honestly wondered whether _anyone_ ever took her seriously.

"You know," she said again. "You look a little perplexed, with your mouth hanging open like that. Do you have a Nigglerworm in your brain, maybe?"

Draco could only stare at her. _What_ had she just said? What in Merlin's name was the crazy bint _on_ about? What was a 'nigglerworm?' Was it a Muggle thing? Could Granger explain it?

Luna took his silence in stride, her large, luminescent eyes going wide. She nodded to herself, and said aloud "Oh, it _must_ be a Nigglerworm, you're losing your speech! Hurry, it's already eating your cerebellum, you have to come and do the ReJuvenation Dance, to get it out of your system! Come _on_!"

She grabbed his wrist, and quite literally dragged him onto the dance floor, much to Draco's dismay. The couples on the dance floor snorted in unison, and from the corner of his eye, Draco caught sight of Granger clutching her bridesmaid-dress-clad stomach in laughter. He knew then that he was never going to live this particular event down.

They got to the middle of the floor, and Luna promptly started to do the ghastliest praying mantis dance Draco had ever had the misfortune to witness. She jerked about for an entire minute, while the sea of people around them simply ignored it. Luna was Luna, simple as that.

Draco stared at her in abject horror.

She stopped her jerky movements, and blinked her large grey-moon eyes at him. "It's not going to die if you just stand there, silly! You have to _dance_! Do you want to die? Because, you know, that's not a very good thing, and I don't think Hermione would be very happy with you…"

She then grabbed his wrist once more, and resumed her jolting movements without another word, tugging him along with her.

So Draco Malfoy resigned himself to a life of complete and utter humiliation from that point on, and allowed Luna Lovegood to teach him _exactly_ how to rid his body of the Nigglerworm.

He would later attribute the pictures of his slight grin to the alcohol.


End file.
